


Rubbishy Robots from the Dawn of Time: Doctor Who, "Deep Breath,' and Moffat Fatigue

by PlaidAdder



Series: Doctor Who Meta [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Spoilers, deep breath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This series premiere is made almost entirely of recycled parts, patched together unconvincingly. Moffat’s playbook is tattered and his Doctor Who idea bank is empty. It is time for him to pack it in. Or for some public-spirited BBC executive to, metaphorically speaking, throw him out of the restaurant and impale him on a steeple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rubbishy Robots from the Dawn of Time: Doctor Who, "Deep Breath,' and Moffat Fatigue

 

I’m in the final stages of an [X-Files rewatch](http://archiveofourown.org/series/95798), and I have been struck on several occasions by how often the show’s writers seem, on some level, to be processing the decline of the show itself in the episodes they create. For instance, the mid-season 8 story arc is about apparently dead bodies somehow managing to cling to life—just as the X-Files itself, while to all outward appearances dead, nevertheless struggled on for another season and a half. So I found it very interesting that “Deep Breath,” the opening episode of Moffat’s…dear God…is it FOURTH season as Doctor Who’s showrunner centers around creepy robots who are unnaturally and pointlessly prolonging a meaningless existence by patching themselves up with bits and pieces stolen from the bodies of existing people. Twelve, or Thirteen or whatever we’re meant to call Peter Capaldi’s doctor, is given quite a bit of dialogue—to the point where it becomes redundant—in which he tries to persuade the chief robot to give up on this pointless and destructive process of self-repair. There’s none of the original you left, he points out. Whatever you once were, you’ve replaced so many parts of you that it’s gone. Whatever it is that you’ve now become, it’s not something worth preserving. You say you have a goal to reach, but it doesn’t exist. There’s no destination here. Your ship no longer flies. Give it up. You’re done.

The chief robot doesn’t agree, of course. Alas, neither does Moffat. 

This series premiere—and, if Moffat follows his usual M.O., to some extent the entire series 8 arc—is in fact a rubbishy robot from the dawn of time. It is made almost entirely of recycled parts, patched together unconvincingly. There is some illusory goal towards which it will claim to progress, but we know it doesn’t exist. Moffat’s playbook is tattered and his Doctor Who idea bank is empty. It is time for him to pack it in. Or for some public-spirited BBC executive to, metaphorically speaking, throw him out of the restaurant and impale him on a steeple.

Harsh words, I know. But look at it. The premise of  _Doctor Who_  is extraordinarily flexible and provides almost unlimited scope for human creativity. As a writer for  _Doctor Who_ you would have all of time and space to play with. Moffat’s starting series 8 with a brand new Doctor whose vast difference from the two previous pretty-boy Doctors has been made much of in both the publicity and in the episode itself. Anyone else, sitting down to write the opener of series eight, would hear the entire universe screaming at him:  _DO SOMETHING NEW._

So what does he do?

**1) Returns the Doctor to the time and place in which much of Series 7 happened, and surrounds him with Vastra, Jenny, Strax, and Victorian!Clara—all characters used in multiple episodes of Series 7.**

It doesn’t help that I never liked the Paternoster Gang that much to start with. If we actually got to see Vastra and Jenny solving crimes a la Holmes and Watson that might be interesting. But Moffat, as he has proved time and again, has no interest in actual detective plots; and Vastra, Jenny, and Strax are always relegated to subordinate roles in plots that are mainly about the Doctor and Clara. Plus, Strax is supposed to be funny and is not—the actor is trying, but he’s a one-joke character and it gets old quickly—and now the Vastra/Jenny relationship has been reduced to a string of the same stupid and not even accurate jokes about “marriage” that we used to have to put up with from Eleven and River Song. 

Also, Moffat’s conception of the Victorian period is cartoonishly crude and painfully unconvincing.

**2) Brings in a gratuitous dinosaur, because apparently “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” didn’t get that out of everyone’s system.**

The scene where the Doctor is translating the dinosaur was really rather moving; but of course the dinosaur is torched immediately thereafter and that’s the end of that.

**3) Cannibalizes the clockwork people and organ-stealing spaceship from “The Girl in the Fireplace” for the main plot (and worse, suggests that this plot will determine the whole season’s story arc).**

And EMPHASIZES that by having the Doctor wittering on and on about how he’s “seen this before.” Who could watch this without wanting to just grab him by the shoulders and shake him and scream, “OF COURSE YOU FUCKING HAVE, DON’T YOU FUCKING REMEMBER ‘GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE?’ I FUCKING DO!”

So he spent series 5-7 ruining “Blink” and the weeping angels for us; and now in Series 8 he’s decided to ruin his second-best individual episode, “The Girl in the Fireplace.” Well, it’s your episode, chief, if you want to destroy it by cutting it up for parts I guess that’s your affair, but I do think it’s a shame.

**4) Replicates the creepy-human-waxwork thing from “The Crimson Horror.”**

**5) Replicates Nine’s apparent loss of Rose in “Dalek.” (“Too slow.”)**

After all that time pretending that Nine never happened, you’ve got some nerve stealing from one of his best episodes now.

**6) Brings in Scary Mary Poppins Lady to replace River Song/Tasha Lem.**

And so on. It’s not new, it’s more of the same, and I’m tired of it. All the to-do about how now that the Doctor is (gasp) OLD he can’t be Clara’s ‘boyfriend’ any more, and yet as soon as that’s established we have this other romance brought in for him, because I guess if the Doctor isn’t making it with SOMEONE, Moffat can’t handle it. Clara finally gets a few minutes where she is actually on her own and actually uses her brain to fend off an adversary…except all she gets to do is stall the robot for a while before the Doctor rescues her again. The little scene where the Doctor talks about how much it hurts that Clara doesn’t see him is the only time where I felt like something was happening that I hadn’t seen a million times on this show before. I mean, all right, continuity, that’s important in a regeneration episode; you could enjoy the references and callbacks to earlier episodes if the show was actually embarking upon a new direction. But it’s clearly not. And that baffles me. Why go back to the same settings over and over again. You have the ENTIRE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM. GO SOMEWHERE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN YET.

And as long as we're talking about continuity, anyway: "Name of the Doctor" establishes that Clara has known and 'saved' all of the Doctors in all their incarnations. In "Day of the Doctor," Clara copes with being in the same room with three different Doctor incarnations (the War Doctor, Ten, and Eleven). In "Time of the Doctor" she watches Eleven get about a trillion years old. And yet, when Eleven turns into Twelve, she practically breaks up with him over the fact that he's got gray hair and a lined face and so all of a sudden she doesn't "know who the Doctor is any more." Given her history with the Doctor as established in that special trilogy, what the hell sense does that make? It makes no sense. Much the way Clara's characterization has made no sense from the moment she was introduced.

It bored me. That’s my basic problem with it. It gave me no reason to be interested in this show except for Peter Capaldi; but even there, if he’s just going to be dealing with the same crap plots and the same cartoonish settings and the same Clara (I’m sorry; I’ve tried to like her; I can’t; blame it on my advanced age) and the same weird futuristic self-repairing French spaceships from the beginning of time…what does it matter?

Ah well. Money saved on iTunes. But it’s a shame. It really is. I hate to see such a great opportunity so criminally wasted


End file.
